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Software Tools

This page contains tools, sample code, libraries and utilities for working with CloudSat data files contributed by the Data Processing Center and CloudSat data users. All items are provided "as is" with no guarantees or warranties of utility or error-free operation. Most of the code examples are provided as a starting point to help you develop your own applications.

Fortran

Reads the Radar_Reflectivity field from a 2B-GEOPROF file, scales it and prints the values in the first profile to the screen. Uses the HDF-EOS library above on Windows, for *NIX you'll need the appropriate libraries for your platform.

Source: CloudSat DPC

Platform: Windows/Linux/UNIX

FTP Data Access

This script retrieves data from the DPC's rotating storage FTP server ftp1.cloudsat.cira.colostate.edu. To use it you'll need to customize it with your login credentials, destination directory, and product and dates of interest.

Author: Cristian Mitrescu (NRL)

Platform: Windows/Linux/UNIX

IDL

Reads a 2B-CLDCLASS file and produces .png images of the cloud_scenario field that match the segments on the DPC quicklooks found at the CloudSat DPC website. There is also an example of how to work with bit fields in IDL on that link.

Reads a 2B-GEORPROF file and produces .png images of the Radar_Reflectivitiy field that match the segments on the DPC quicklooks found at the CloudSat DPC website. Contains hooks to read and create images of the CPR_Cloud_mask field as well.

This program reads in the colocated AIRS and Cloudsat fields generated by the Colocate AIRS & CloudSat program above, and plots maps and vertical x-sections. This code can be adapted to other coincident platforms, such as MODIS, etc.

Other Utilities

HDF Explorer is a free program that allows browsing of HDF and HDF-EOS files to inspect field and attribute names, sizes, types sizes and contents. The paid version includes visualization capabilities.

The binary dumper utility dumps HDF-EOS objects in binary format. This is useful for feeding the output of it into existing program, which does not understand HDF, for example: custom software and COTS products.

NCSA's HDFView is a free Java application that allows browsing of HDF and HDF-EOS files to inspect field and attribute names, sizes, types sizes and contents. It has a few more features than the free version of HDF Explorer (below).

Source: NCSA

Platform: Windows/Linux/UNIX

More HDF Applications

A comprehensive list of tools for reading, converting, and visualizing HDF files can be found at The HDF Group website.

Plotting Utilities

ccplot is an open source command-line tool to produce two-dimensional plots of profile and earth view data sets, including CloudSat 2B-GEOPROF and several CALIPSO and MODIS data products. It is written in python and depends on the PyNIO, matplotlib, basemap, and numpy libraries.